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Monday, June 23, 2014

Re-Genesis


Since I don't know when I'll next have a chance to blog, and I'm feeling inspired, I'm writing a pretty long post here, reviewing principles I've been writing and talking about the past few years, all crystallizing together here.

But before I get started philosophizing, here's what's happening in my life now, an update on the "moneyless tribe" and possibilities of meeting up with us, and a re-cap of what's been happening the past few weeks.

The "moneyless tribe," 
meeting at the Rainbow Gathering again

Right now it's just me, Steph, and Jake camping in the canyon, as well as Freebird (who is camping near us and hanging with us a lot, but using money).  Steph, Jake, Freebird, and I plan to leave for the Rainbow Gathering here in Utah sometime this week, and maybe others around Moab will join us.

Brandon left to visit his family with plans of hooking back up with us at the Gathering.  Govinda left for good back to Australia.  And Jake is the newest newcomer.  He didn't know about me or this 'tribe' and just randomly bumped into us while hiking a couple weeks ago.  Then he decided to bike back down here from Salt Lake City and hook up with us.

I kind of gave up on the "moneyless tribe" last Fall, and decided no more planning for it.  I figured it will happen organically if it's meant to be, or it won't.  When I let go, it started arising again on its own, though fluctuating.

Since folks ask how to find us, we'll have a "moneyless tribe" camp again, with a sign and directions posted at the gathering, like last year, so people can find us.  And I really don't know what's going on after the Gathering.  We might head to Oregon or we might stay around this area, or who knows.  Depends on the consensus of our group.  See consensus here if you're not sure what it is.

I put "moneyless tribe" in quotes because I don't like the idea of us having an official label.  We're not really called anything.  Just people who love each other and don't use money.

Any of you who hooks up with us must have zero expectations.  Randomness and zero expectations are the ultimate driving force of this lifestyle, and the seeming lack of direction can be frustrating when you've been programmed by Babylon to have every minute of your life planned and scheduled and filled with incessant talking and "doing something."  Incessant talking seems to be the biggest epidemic among especially white people.  If you can't be content with doing nothing or randomness or silence, then don't come.  What appears as lack of discipline (defined by Babylon) is our discipline.  The discipline is living in the moment, accepting what is, and loving each other unconditionally.  And it's a time of healing for us who need healing.  Some folks come and leave because they think they might be a burden on us with their "hangups," and that makes me sad, because healing hangups is what this is about.  Don't be so absorbed in yourself to think you're the only one with hang-ups.  We all have our hang-ups.  Also, expectations can be shattered realizing we do have hang-ups too.  Boosting each other through thick and thin is called life.

The link between money, agriculture, conventional religion, 
and our violation of nature

Last night I did my last radio show at KZMU Moab Community Radio for a while, maybe for good.  I've enjoyed DJ'ing there so much, it's hard to let it go.

Between Cullen and me, we got about 2/3 of my shows recorded.  I'm hoping to get them available on the internet when there's a chance to work on it.

My topic last night was "THE LINK BETWEEN MONEY, AGRICULTURE, AND OUR VIOLATION OF NATURE".  My talk was an attempt to illustrate that our money, agriculture, religion, and their violation of nature, is not a lack of knowledge or proper programs or systems, but a simple manifestation of our not being authentic, a simple manifestation of having impure hearts.  Here I'm going to expound on what I talked about last night.

First, I referred to Jared Diamond's The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth, and Michael Quinn's Ishmael.  In bringing up Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth, I don't necessarily knock vegetarianism or vegan-ism, but I want to point out that if you do it for the purpose of avoiding killing, you're mistaken.  If you're doing it for the purpose of not supporting factory farms, that's a good reason.  But if you're eating from conventional agriculture, you're supporting just as much destruction as if you were eating factory farm meat.

What we must realize is there isn't a single life form that exists without the death of another.  We cannot eliminate death any more than we can eliminate negative-charge particles.  It's about finding the beautiful balance between life and death, not eliminating death.  And, as Diamond, Keith, and Quinn point out, the evidence is overwhelming that mass extinctions, environmental devastation, chronic disease, malnutrition, class-ism, sexual inequality, and overpopulation came with the advent of agriculture.

Agriculture and money arose from the same mindset


My point is to take this deeper to show that agriculture and money arose from the same mindset.  I have a hunch that money and agriculture arose simultaneously as a direct manifestation of our spiritual mindset, our lack of faith in the very most basic law of nature.  Again, I call it thought of credit and debt, or "knowledge of good and evil", our fall from Grace, in our Judeo-Christian tradition, and "stealing fire from heaven" found in countless other traditions all over the world.  The stealing fire from heaven is a way of describing our attempt to control the flow of energy and to possess it.  It is our lack of faith in the current of energy, the currency of nature, trying to control and possess it.  Our currency, our money, is not energy, nor the flow of energy, but simply our attempt to control that flow. 

Money and agriculture, as well as conventional religion, represent not doing for the sake of doing, but for the sake of future reward, future fruit.  Sow for the purpose of reaping in the future.  Work for the sake of a future salary.  Be good for the sake of a future reward in heaven or because of fear of punishment of hell.

Pay Myself vs Pay-It-Forward

In true hunter-gatherer culture, as well as in all wild ecology, there is a pay-it-forward system.  One sows, another reaps.  A bird eats a berry with no sense of payback to the berry tree.  She reaps what others have sown.  Then she poops out the digested matter as well as the berry seeds, planting and feeding and fertilizing other creatures, who reap what she has sown.  And they continue this perfect pay-it-forward economy, all with no thought of barter or prices or economics.  When you are authentically yourself, you are nature, and you have no attachment to the fruit of your actions.  You have no ulterior motivation.  This means you do for the sake of doing, not for future reward.  Your reward is in doing.

On the other hand,
every interaction of nature is a perfect, simultaneous barter

At another level, the level of the present moment, you are participating in a perfect, unconscious simultaneous barter.  Every interaction in all of the universe is a perfect barter, simultaneously in the present moment.  Everything is paid for, everything runs on perfect justice.  

I am talking the law of physics.  For every force, there is an equal and opposite force, simultaneously in the moment.  For every action, there is an equal simultaneous reaction.  For every positive, there is an equal negative.  For every wave crest, there is an equal wave trough.  This is the most basic and simple law of all the universe, the law behind all laws, the simplest to grasp.  Yet we somehow lost faith in it and cannot grasp it!  This law of physics is also the law of biology and of social interaction. 

If I cannot see that your giving to me is my giving to you simultaneously, if I cannot see that your doing a service to me is simultaneously my doing an exactly equal service to you, then I am living in delusion!  The only possible impetus for inventing money and conventional agriculture is delusion, the delusion of not seeing this most basic law of the universe.  


Vengeance is mine, I repay right now, says the Law of the Universe.

So, what do we do?

So, what do we do?  The simple answer is, be authentic, be yourself, and all will fall into place.  If I am myself, I won't do what I'm paid to do but will do what I know is natural for me to do.  If I am myself, I well not give in to anybody or any system telling me to go against my own nature.  That might mean quitting my job, quitting my religion, quitting my bank.  Simple, but daunting to do.  It might mean I get crucified.

On a larger scale, what could happen?  Right now in the world we have a massive agricultural and money system and out-of-control overpopulation.  Do we, must we, go back to hunter-gatherer living?


Permaculture

Let's refer back to a blog post I wrote here on November 15, 2011, To Be Yourself Is To Be Perfect

I'm feeling in my bones that permaculture is a key to bring in gift economy, for whole populations to live moneyless.  I've never honestly cared for traditional agriculture, which I'm sure arose with money and barter, and was the beginning of our imbalance.  My ideal has been the hunter-gatherer model, which obviously wouldn't work today without a major die-off of people.  That leaves us permaculture, which is about creating a self-regenerating system, not only of agriculture, but of everything connected to it. 
Machinery is generation.  Life is regeneration.  

This got me super excited, taking the principles of permaculture into social interaction:


Generation is generosity (which we see as a virtue).  Regeneration is re-generosity - Gifts that keep giving.  Generosity is a thing of artificial institutions.  Re-generosity is a thing of living communities!


Generosity has a sense of self-righteousness, self-credit.  "I did my good deed for the day", stacking up credit points.  
Re-generosity is perpetual giving, such as breathing, having no thought of credits or debt.  You don't expect praise for every lungful of carbon dioxide you freely give to the world, you just egolessly do it.  And you don't feel guilty about every lungful of oxygen you take. Generosity comes from stores of excess, from possession.  In re-generosity, there is no possession, only perpetual flow. 
It makes no sense to "own" air in your lungs. 
When you own nothing, there is no effort in giving, no sense of self-righteousness. 
Life is not a charity, it is constant giving.

Permaculture is allowing everything to be its natural self, for greater efficiency and productivity with minimal effort, as all of nature works.

Re-Genesis

   
As I was re-reading what I'd written above, another epiphany hit me:  

Regeneration is re-generosity is re-genesis!  

We are in a culture, an agriculture culture, an agri-culture, a money culture, and a religious culture that thinks linearly, not cyclically.  We are in a culture that sees a genesis and an end, with no regeneration.  And it cannot recycle its own waste.  We are in a culture that sees a linear scripture of Genesis and a Revelation, a creation and a final apocalypse.  Nothing regenerates, nothing evolves, nothing recycles, everything has one beginning, regresses, then ends, capoot.

We sow a seed, it grows, we wait for its fruit, we harvest it, and it is over.  Unlike a wild plant, it does not regenerate itself.  It is not self-sustaining.  It does not recycle.  Its driving force, its motivation, is extrinsic.  It needs an outward force to keep it alive.  It does not have the wherewithal to live on its own.  It is weak, and it imparts its weakness to us.  We are a weak and immature culture.

Extrinsic or Intrinsic Motivation

And we are what we eat.  We cannot find our motivation from within.  Our motivation has become extrinsic.  This principle is the theme of this speech I gave last May, on video here (You are your own diploma, you are your own currency). Yes, our motivation has become ulterior.  Ulterior means further, future.  Ulterior is something far away in space and time.  Our reward is no longer in doing.  Our reward has become far away in space in time. 

Created in the Image of Reality

When our motivation is ulterior, we are not authentic, we are not real, we are not ourselves, we are not the Image of Reality.  The Image of Reality is Reality.  Reality creates us in Reality's own Image.  Anything else is an idol.  Idol is illusion.  What motivates us is what we worship.  We are what we worship, an idol, ulterior motivation, fake, illusion.  What we worship is what gives us energy, our driving force, our food.  This is my body, take, eat.  We are what we eat.  We are our agriculture.  We are our money.  We are our deluded religions.

Our agriculture does not regenerate itself.  It is not permaculture.  It is in battle with nature.  It violates nature.


Myth of the Eternal Return:
Regeneration

And our conventional myth does not regenerate itself.  It is linear, like our agriculture and our everyday thinking.  Mircea Eliade pointed out how "primitive" cultures worldwide, unlike modern western culture, have a Myth of the Eternal Return.  The Creation is ever repeating, yet Ever Now, and people enter into this Creation in religious ritual. 

Our Suicidal Myth of Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Our world does not regenerate itself.  It is artificial.  It is not a Re-genesis, but began with a one-time Genesis.  And, after linear time, like our agriculture, it will end in an Apocalypse-Armageddon.  We have made our world such a prison, such a living hell, we rub our hands together in awaiting our Apocalypse Armageddon.  We are making this Apocalyptic Armageddon happen in self-fulfilling prophecy.  Except that we cannot recognize that our Armageddon is subject to the cycle of nature, thus we live in a perpetual Armageddon, a prison of hell, making us futily desire even more that it would end.  Look around.

Take note that hunting and gathering cultures have never had a concept of an end of the world.  This is a concept invented by agricultural cultures.  If they have made the world such a better place, why oh why do they hope for its end?

We love our Savior in the past and we love our Savior in the future, but we call blasphemy any idea of our Savior within, here and now.  We love our Eden, our Paradise, our Kingdom of heaven, in the past, and we love our Kingdom of Heaven in the future, but we call heresy any idea of the Kingdom of Heaven within, the Kingdom of Heaven at hand, here and now.  

Uncovering Our True Myth Right Under Our Noses


You don't need any book to show you that Creation as well as the Apocalypse is happening now.  Just look around you.  

Light is coming to being right now, 
as well as division between light and dark.  
Water is accumulating into bodies 
and atmosphere is forming right now.  
The earth is bringing forth plants, right now.  
And stars are being born, right now.  
And animals and humans are being formed from the soil, right now.  
And we are being conformed to the Image of Reality, right now.  
And all is being destroyed, right now.  
Apocalypse Now.
Genesis Now.

Even so, it's fun to look deeper at our old religious texts and uncover their covered truth.

Our myth (by myth I don't mean lie, I mean deep spiritual truths imparted through stories) was originally the Myth of the Eternal Return, and this deeply true Myth was lost, covered.  Uncover the truth.  Apocalypse means uncovering what already isYeah, it's funny we have to refer to books, like the Bible, to tell us what we already know.  I get a kick out of telling folks I take the biblical Genesis creation literally, that the "fundamentalists" don't take it literally enough!  If you take Genesis literally, you see that it is Re-Genesis.  It is happening now.  The Hebrew text is literally present tense! 

Check out Young's Literal Translation of the Bible.  The Hebrew scholar, Robert Young, found that,
Bereshith bara elohim, the RSV's "In the beginning God created...", is in the construct state (bereshith), not the absolute (barishona), meaning it refers to an action in progress, not to a completed act.
and
Young's usage of English present tense rather than past tense has been supported by scholars ranging from the medieval Jewish rabbi Rashi... to Richard Elliott Friedman in his translation of the Five Books ...
Until we get out of our delusion of linear thinking, of credit-and-debt mentality, of running on ulterior motivation, otherwise called greed and idolatry, yes, until we uncover the truth, until we realize that the Beginning is the End, ever Now, the same yesterday, today, and forever, until we see that Genesis is Ever Now, and the Apocalypse is Ever Now, we will not escape our violation of wild nature, violation of our own true natures, violation of our very own souls.  Until we find our true Myth, the Myth of Re-Genesis, we will not live, we will not regenerate, we will not recycle, we will be fake and pathetic just like the characters we see on our televisions and in our offices of politics and business.




  

16 comments:

  1. Hi Suelo, This is a brilliant post. Many subjects covered well.
    I studied permaculture 20 years ago - it's a full solution to the world's practical needs...
    You might like my blog, some similar topics discussed:
    http://veritopian.blogspot.co.uk/

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  2. I look at vegetarianism differently. You re correct that we can not avoid killing. The Jains classify life by the number of senses that particular life form has. For example, a cow has 5 senses like a human. Bacteria has one sense. The idea is to refrain from killing as many multi-sense life forms as possible.

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    1. Why are multi-sense life forms valued more than single-sense life forms?
      -J

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    2. To look at other species through the lens of our own senses is specieism. An orchid has no senses of ours, yet it knows, somehow, so well what is happening around it that it has evolved to mimic a certain wasp so that it can lure its males to copulate with its flower and so to pollinate it.

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  3. Hi Suelo,

    Just want to preface by saying that I thoroughly enjoy your blog, as well as Sundeen's book - I have learned a lot from you, and look forward to learning more. Many excellent points made in this post, as usual, and I agree that our agricultural system is an extension of our money/barter system and from an inherent fear of the future that pervades religion, education, etc. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a vegan, and do have some discussion points for your consideration.

    I respectfully disagree that vegans/vegetarians in some ways are contributing to just as much destruction as those eating factory farm meat. I agree that the factory farm system is highly flawed, and as you point out, it is a good reason for being vegan/vegetarian. However I do think there is a difference between, what I will term, "active" and "passive" killing of animals. By eating meat, especially from conventional, factory-farm sources, we are "actively" raising, imprisoning, and killing, often in very inhumane conditions and methods, animals for the sole purpose of human consumption. By comparison, eating a plant-based diet via conventional/factory-farm agriculture, I certainly grant that animals are displaced, migratory routes disrupted, habitats destroyed, and animals are killed by pesticides, herbicides, and harvesting techniques. I differentiate this type of "passive" killing from "active" killing in that, with the exception of pesticides, the human intent is not to kill the animals specifically. As you say, all life forms can not exist without the death of another. However I think the differentiator is "intent". To further this point, if we consider that 70% of agriculture in the US is dedicated to feed for consumption animals, then to make a fair comparison with a vegetarian/vegan diet, we must add the "passive" killing of agriculture raised for feeding animals for meat consumption to the equation. Therefore a vegan/vegetarian diet, although perhaps equal in its agricultural destruction with a meat diet, eliminates the "active" killing of those animals brought into this world, raised, and then killed for the sole benefit of humans.

    Now, if we are responsible vegans/vegetarians, and we procure our produce from small, local, organic, and more responsibly-practiced farms, as opposed to factory "mega" farms often found in regular grocery store, then we can move in a direction of improvement. I completely agree with you that the future is in permaculture. I certainly concede that humans evolved as omnivores, many believing the cooking of meat to be responsible for the meteoric rise of human intelligence and evolution, but in my humble opinion, we have the technology now to eliminate the unnecessary killing and consumption of animals. As you say, life cannot exist without death, but we don't have to control the birth and death of animals just for our own benefit.

    Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

    Respectfully,
    Tomas

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  4. My understanding is that we should refrain from killing higher-sense beings for reasons of conscieness. A cow or a fish clearly feels pain. A single-cell organism or an onion probably does not feel pain. An onion does not have conscience, but a cow does.

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    1. Just because an organism doesn't feel pain doesn't mean we should value it less. All organisms perform roles in nature. To try to preserve multi-sense organisms and not single-sense organisms is to negatively affect nature because without their roles, nature would become imbalanced.

      Since humans rely on nature to perform certain services, known as ecosystem services, we would be negatively affecting ourselves in the process by impairing nature's ability to perform those services.
      -J

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  5. Hopefully what I say here is clear enough but, I think the main issue with death today is that it's lost its meaning. Many tribal cultures had a place for death and even managed to make it look beautiful through ceremonies. Today, death more is like a factory produced product since its everywhere on the media and has worked its way into our foods because of the fact no one respects the mysterious processes which take place when souls leave bodies anymore. I also think modern culture could find ways of respecting the dead more through art even though artwork has became as much of a commodity as death too.

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  6. Thought provoking as usual--and well-explained points. Like others, I think eating an organic vegetarian-based diet is less destructive to the environment but don't believe it is a permanent, sustainable solution just yet. Still, better for the environment than raising animals for killing and eating purposes. I'll be doing some research into permaculture. Thanks for your thoughts.

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  7. I actually agree with Tomas' thoughtful input above.
    I intended to write a more in-depth section on veganism & vegetarianism, to clarify my points, but the post was already so long. I've often said that, if I used money, I'd be a vegan. I agree that an organic vegan diet is less destructive than a grain-fed meet diet. But, as Lierre Keith points out, the thing that makes a meat-base diet so destructive is that most cattle are grain-fed - destructive to the cattle, to the environment, and to us. Grass-fed Cattle and other grazers are absolutely necessary for the health of a grass prairie, and they are healthy themselves. To say that they "use up" the land is just as absurd as saying birds use up air and fish use up sea. These animals are the very health of the environment.

    However, I tend to feel Keith is a bit reactionary against veganism. Her health declined as a vegan. Other people's health increased as vegans. Do veganism wrong: health declines. Do veganism right: health increases.

    However, again, when we look at the bigger picture, we see that the healthiest cultures with the greatest respect for life and the greatest balance with the environment and the greatest equality and respect among individuals and sexes, have been true hunter-gatherer cultures, such as Bushmen, Hadza, and Pygmies (I'm not talking semi-agricultural groups as found in New Guinea and the Amazon, which also, curiously, practice trade and have great sexism and vindictive violence). The paleolithic hunter-gatherer diet was our diet for millions of years before agriculture, and there was no overpopulation until agriculture.

    As far as the philosophy of eating organisms with "no" or "less" consciousness goes, again, I say we must look at the big picture and what causes the greatest death and destruction in the world. Our eating of soybeans, if it is grown conventionally, is more destructive to all organisms, including those we consider most "conscious", like ourselves, because it disrupts the entire ecosystem we all depend upon, causing mass extinctions.

    But let's examine what we regard as "conscious." Please take notice that true hunter-gatherer cultures see not only all living things, but all inanimate things, as full of pure consciousness. In agricultural culture, we become bias toward those like us, and we devalue anybody not like us, thinking them less "conscious" than ourselves. For example, White people of the past generally thought of white people of highest consciousness, and other ethnicities as less conscious or even not conscious! Ironically, it was whites' LACK of consciousness that could not see the consciousness of others! As our consciousness expanded, so we began to see consciousness of other culures. Now we are beginning to see, more and more, the high consciousness of animals. As our consciousness expands even more, we begin to see that all matter is purely imbibed with pure consciousness. Then we are back to the hunter-gatherer highest consciousness, that sees the consciousness of even stones, of the sun, of the moon. Then we begin to see that even our own ancient traditions speak of the consciousness of stones and trees and, even documented in Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist scriptures! Once we get past looking at one tree, we see the forest. Once we get past immature individual sentimentalism, our sight of compassion reaches every particle in the universe. As the scriptures of India point out, the enlightened one sees the Atman in all beings and all things.

    I hope to publish a more in-depth treatise on consciousness, spirituality, and the ethics of diet. True spirituality is not a sentimental dogma but a symbiosis with all nature.

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    1. I look forward to your more in-depth treatise! The post above is already "food" for thought. :) I think when we reach the point that we realize we are ONE with the ALL it is impossible not to see that all matter/energy is interchangeable and simply in various forms of expression. Still, as far as diet is concerned, as Paul says,"'Everything is permissible'--but not everything is beneficial."

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  8. It's possible to build an (almost) closed-loop aquaponics system. In which case you can grow enough fish and veggies to live on in a very small area - all year round.
    The main hurdle is food for the fish - so you have 'feed tanks' with no fish in - where you breed daphnia. You have worm-bins for waste, with the worms going to the fish, and the feed to the plants. There are other tricks too.
    You can filter the (small amount of) input water to remove most toxins (metals, radioactivity etc).

    I'm not sure that it's valid for us to judge which forms of life are 'more conscious' than others. My feeling is even fruit flies and bacteria are perfectly conscious. I mean, where is the evidence that *consciousness* is related to brain size? Ultimately we should get our sustenance directly from the creator, but because we like to pretend it doesn't exist, we have to eat each other instead...

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  9. The form of persecution I got for practicing your lifestyle was by the psychiatric system. They claim I have a chemical imbalance in the brain, and that I need drugs to correct this. But they won't tell me what the correct balance of chemicals is.

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  10. Splendid post Suelo, simply splendid. I will be printing this out at the library this week and passing it out to friends. Thanks for all you do - gina

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  11. Hi there Mr. Suelo.

    It's nice to confirm that there are others out there. I have been functionally moneyless for the past year or so, when I went homeless and moved out into the streets, and blissfully moneyless since this past March, after finished with giving the last bit of everything away. I didn't realize it at the time, but this increasing progression towards simplification has been going on over the past 10 years. It would have sounded crazy if someone had told me then that this is where things were headed, but it makes complete sense now.

    Meanwhile, logic would suppose that there there should be a lot more of us out there, like millions or something, who are also connecting the dots. I was initially thinking that I would casually come across them by just keeping my eyes open as I went about my business, but this sort of thing is turning out to be more of rarity than I had expected. Probably more like searching for extraterrestrial civilization, where they "theoretically" must exist out there somewhere... but lord where are they?

    It would be nice to correspond, and it sounds on your blog that you are also interested in meeting others as well, but I threw away my cell phone and scrambled my email account password quite some time ago, preferring to keep my attention on local person-to-person/face-to-face interaction. However, I have 2 very like-minded friends who may be sending you an email at some point. Please keep an eye out for it!

    Regards,

    Stephen

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  12. Paying it forward is always the best currency.

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